Residential, industrial and agricultural wastes and sludges are potentially a rich source of carbon based energy for electric power if dried sufficiently for use as a solid fuel source. These wastes often include increasingly scarce fresh water, which needs to be recovered in a potable condition. The solids in the past have been buried in a landfill or land applied, but are now regulated under discharge limits found in the United States Federal Industrial Pre-treatment Program or under new regulations titled National Pollution Discharge Elimination System and Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) managed by government entities. Many such wastes are not allowed within a landfill, and land application is increasingly restricted for reasons of health and environmental safety.
Municipal and industrial waste treatment systems typically employ some combination of chemical additives for coagulation with screw or belt presses, vibratory devices, hydro cyclones, centrifuges and (or) settling tanks and ponds to separate solids from water. Treatment at concentrated animal feed lots uses little technology other than dredging solids from open pond storage and land application. These management means occupy large footprints, are expensive to maintain and increasingly acknowledged to put workers and residents at health risk. By contrast, the double chambered high speed centrifugal filtration of my invention described herein may continuous and enclosed fluids purification, heat and vacuum solids drying and sterilization. This equipment may be modular with high throughput, relatively small and mobile.
Related devices employ cyclonic action dependent on fluid rotation at relatively low revolutions per minute as a result of being introduced off-center and under line pressure. The filter apparatus of my invention may perform a series of solids and liquid processing functions without the characteristic application of expensive and time consuming chemistries. This combination generates compressed and dry solids from suspended and soluble slurries for use as fuels and/or fertilizer.
Fresh water is an increasingly scarce resource. The appearance of antibiotics and antibiotic resistant bacteria in run offs from all sources are subject to new regulation. Waste carbon solids, from a potential energy perspective, are known to convert at the rate of 3 lbs. dry waste (6,000 Btu per pound) to 1 kW electrical power. If recovered dry waste solids could be fed to an electric power plant, and would contribute substantially to our national energy budget. Global warming and population growth continue to limit the supply of fresh water, which argues for greater efforts to recycle both waste solids and water. The modular core devices noted here address this issue.
The filtration apparatus of this invention also addresses the need to separate waste water from emulsified oil. The flat wire aperture of this multi chambered centrifugal device successfully breaks the emulsion. The continuous discharge centrifugal filter subsequently achieves a three phase separation of waste solids, water and oil without chemicals. Both oil and water are thus recyclable. The present invention conserves clean water, usable fuels, lubricants and other industrially useful products.